Solana Saga unboxing review: Is the $1000 Web3 phone really worth buying?
Original author: Yobo, Foresight News
Written at the beginning: Thanks to Daniel from Solana Foundation for his human cross-border express delivery service, which allowed me to experience this hard-to-buy phone. I hope he won't block me after reading this.
Saga is cool, both in terms of its backstory and the special meaning Solana gives it in Web3.
However, Saga is not good enough, at least as a flagship phone with sufficient price, the completion is too far behind.
In 2014, Andy Rubin, known as the father of Android, left Google and took away a whopping $90 million in severance pay. However, his legendary life took a bit of a turn for the worse. In 2017, Andy launched the first Essential Phone, which is forever associated with the "father of Android". To this day, this phone is still sought after by tech enthusiasts, but Essential's poor product design and unreasonable official price did not attract enough Android users to pay for their faith, and Essential soon went bankrupt.
In 2021, some members of the Essential team once again entered the mobile phone market under the brand OSMO and announced their first phone, the OSOM OV1. However, the story of their comeback is still full of obstacles. In June of last year, OSOM announced that the OV1 was officially renamed, and the name of the protagonist of this article, Saga, emerged.
The predecessor flagship processor of Snapdragon 8+, with a dual camera setup for the sake of it, and a rear fingerprint module that hasn't appeared on flagship-level phones since the era of Snapdragon 845 (Qualcomm's flagship chip has been iterated 7 times since then, and has gone through a complete cycle from Ice Dragon to Fire Dragon and back to Ice Dragon). In the current era where Sony has managed to fit a 5000mAh battery into a body weighing less than 190g, Saga has managed to fit a 4200mAh battery into a whopping 247g. Looking at the parameters, it's a series of incredible combinations, coupled with a price of $1000, which feels worth at least five "wow"s. This time, is Saga going to make users suffocate for their "faith"?
With a head full of question marks, I played with this phone for a few days. Although the hardware's shortcomings have pinned its potential to a not-so-high level, some novel attempts may really attract a small group of digital geeks who will be "killed" by curiosity.
Without regard to the context and industry-specific terms, I will translate the Chinese text into English. English words and phrases, as well as capitalized English words and phrases, should not be translated or omitted, for example: ZKS, STARK, SCROLL -> ZKS, STARK, SCROLL. If there are English characters in the a link, they should not be translated and should be returned directly. When there are only punctuation marks in the content, the punctuation marks should be returned as they are. HTML tags in the content should not be translated, such as
, , ,, etc. If there are English characters in the HTML tags, they should be omitted and returned directly. The content in the a link should be preserved and not translated. All Chinese characters should be translated. The following is the translation of the content:
Without further ado, let me start with the most core part of the Saga product premium - "Solana Ecology" and "Seed Library + dApp App Store".
(PS: If you are more interested in the product itself, you can skip the next section and read the regular unboxing part first. However, friendly reminder, after skipping and reading it, please remember to come back to this position and read about the most important reason why Saga can evolve from OV1 to Saga.)
Solana, Seed Vault... Everything You Can't See on Ordinary Phones
Seed Vault (Seed Vault) hosting solution is an important feature that you can perceive when you first open Saga and activate it. The wallet mnemonic will be stored in a secure local environment and supports fingerprint quick signature and other operations. During the process of activating the mobile phone, you will be prompted to create or bind a Solana wallet. Users familiar with wallet operations should not have any obstacles and can import the mnemonic directly.
The default supported wallets include Phantom and Solflare. The wallet binding process is straightforward and only requires fingerprint verification and confirmation, provided that the seed library has been set up.
After binding, you can receive tokens of 20 USDC and 0.01 SOL, which are used to lower the threshold for new users to experience Solana's ecological applications. In addition, you can also receive Saga commemorative NFT airdrops.
At the time of writing, the built-in dApp application market on mobile phones has launched 36 applications, covering various types such as wallets, DeFi, NFT, social media, audio and video, games, and browsers.
Just tried Magic Eden briefly. It's very simple to use fingerprint for signature verification, but occasionally there may be errors during the verification process, and it may take a few more attempts to succeed. It remains to be seen whether this is due to isolated network issues or requires more time for verification.
Except for the applications that have been launched, Saga also supports opening Solana applications directly in the browser and calling Seed Vault to quickly link the wallet and interact. However, compared to the dApps that have been launched, the probability of this operation failing is higher, and some applications may also have situations where clicking the "connect wallet" button is completely ineffective.
When downloading applications from the dApp application market, there was a situation where Google Play warned of risks. It seems that Web2 and Web3 are truly incompatible (dog head manually.jpg).
I specifically went to experience Minty fresh, which was previously "commended" by the official as a dApp that can generate NFTs with just one click using images or camera shots. The interaction logic is very simple - connect the wallet, select the image, and then mint it. However, I tested several images and none of them were successfully uploaded to the chain due to unknown errors. Due to time constraints, I was unable to thoroughly solve the problem. Currently, although some user-friendly features have been implemented in Web3 applications, the issue of user experience still remains a long and difficult road.
However, Saga at least shows us another possibility beyond the Apple App Store and various Android app stores, a possibility that can bypass the complicated review process, allowing creators and developers to more directly unleash their imagination and further narrow the distance between application publishers and users. And isn't this exactly the goal that Web3 wants to achieve?
Starting from the most frequently used mobile phones in daily life, simplifying the interaction logic of the mobile end, and allowing more people to directly access excellent dApps within the on-chain ecosystem, Solana's attempt may still seem clumsy at present, but I think the future imagination space is worth looking forward to.
认真地开个箱
translates to
Open the box carefully
in English.
Next, forget about the platform on which you are reading this article, and let's return to the normal content that should be included in a mobile phone unboxing.
The size of the mobile phone packaging box can tell that it should also be very environmentally friendly. Don't expect much from the charging head, the plastic packaging quality is worrying, and it is definitely unqualified for a price of 1000 dollars. However, the wild United States may not care about these things.
Compared to hasty plastic sealing, the pull-out packaging itself is much more comfortable to handle, and it can achieve a perfect score without using a very stupid snap-on lid.
Take everything out and take a photo as a souvenir. Except for the phone itself, everything else should never leave the cabinet again.
The author has been using iPhone12 pro+Flip3 as the main and backup combination for the past six months, so the first impression of Saga is heavy. The overall texture of the device is better than expected, and the metal processing of the frame is great. The 2.5D glass ensures that there is no cutting feeling when sliding on the edge, and the frosted metal texture is much better than the Apple Pro series' shiny stainless steel in terms of anti-fingerprint ability. It is much more comfortable for people with OCD. The feel of the ceramic backplate is self-evident, and the warmth of the ceramic is obvious when held in hand, except that it is not as good as a few glasses that have undergone special treatment in terms of anti-fingerprint.
Although the explosion of mobile imaging has caused the rear camera module to become increasingly outrageous, the protrusion of Saga's rear camera is not high. However, because the module is triangular in shape, the bottom of the protrusion is a small triangular corner, and the perception of shaking when placed on a desktop with the screen facing up is obvious. If you are willing to add a phone case, the problem can be solved. However, I searched for phone cases on X Bao and couldn't find any. Plus, it's already heavy enough, so let's go naked.
One slight regret about the front-facing camera is that it doesn't have a black coating. I even suspect that it was designed to have this silver ring style, which is a bit confusing and disrupts the overall unity of the design.
The three side buttons are processed into green with a lively feeling. However, firstly, green seems to have little to do with Solana, and secondly, the power button is so small and placed in the golden position of the right thumb. I have been using the volume down and power buttons for the past few days, and the frequency of misoperation is quite high. The bonus points have been successfully pulled back to a neutral level.
Boot up.
Activation requires scientific internet access, otherwise WiFi will keep reminding you that it cannot access the network, even if you skip online activation and go directly into the system. However, accessing websites within the Great Firewall is not a problem, so I don't need to continue explaining what you can do, right?
The system is standard native Android, with Android 13 out of the factory. I don't know how many major upgrades the official version can push. Out of the factory, there is only Google's full suite of apps, and nothing else. It's very comfortable.
Screen refresh rate has three options (60, 90, 120), and the first impression of the display is quite delicate. After all, a resolution of 2400x1080 can already be considered a 2K screen for domestic manufacturers.
However, the color of this screen is a bit explosive, with severe redness under light backgrounds, and it is like this under all brightness levels. I feel that this is why the machine defaults to dark mode. As a light color fan, after using it for a few hours, I switched back to dark mode honestly.
It takes about 15-16 times to complete the post-fingerprint entry for one finger, which is not surprising as a "nostalgic" operation.
As for the camera, the main camera is the IMX766 that Huawei has already polished, but without the algorithm, it's already been two years since it was released, so don't expect too much. The wide-angle lens is the IMX373, which was used in the front camera of the Xiaomi 6X released 5 years ago. You could say it's "retro" or not. I randomly took a few sample photos, just looking at the color reproduction without considering the composition.
The overall style is a standard saturation warrior. It is not surprising that the 766 does not have Huawei's algorithm, and its old age is fully revealed. In this operation, the large area of red in Figure 4 becomes blurred. The details are not good even in well-lit conditions, and several compressions have been applied to the uploaded image, so it is estimated that the details cannot be seen. The flower part of the original image in Figure 2 has a noticeable oil painting effect. In scenes that can already be handled by thousand-yuan machines, there is a visible gap in the main camera. The antique wide-angle and night scenes are really not worth looking forward to. Let's take a look at two sample images.
This wide-angle lens has perfect image quality, both in the center and at the edges, as well as in aspects such as edge distortion correction and anti-purple fringing, etc. It perfectly presents the image quality level of the front camera from 5 years ago.
How to describe night scenes? Hmmmm, because I opened the night mode in an environment that is not so dark, I got the picture on the left, while the one on the right was taken randomly using the default mode of S23Ultra. I don't know what else to say.
Here's an interesting point to add: when customizing the system, Saga missed changing some content, so the product name OSMO was left in the camera section.
With such a large screen and high refresh rate, coupled with a small battery of less than 4200mAh, battery life is inevitably poor. The daily screen-on time is basically around 4 hours, and if you have charging conditions while sitting at a desk every day, there is no problem. However, once you go out, it adds to the anxiety. The charging speed is also lagging behind domestic Android phones by a large margin, and this capacity should be used for ceramic and middle frame instead.
There is a major issue with wireless charging on mobile phones, as the wireless charging coil needs to be positioned very precisely. The Xiaomi 80W charger is quite friendly to both iPhones and Samsung phones, as they can be charged without much effort. However, the Saga charger needs to be positioned very accurately and often disconnects during charging, resulting in an awkward user experience.
As for the external output, front-end effects, and gaming experience, we won't go into too much detail here. From the temperature control performance, it can be considered as an 8+ performance without too many restrictions. Games like Genshin Impact, which are at the level of benchmarking software, can definitely be played with the 8+ foundation, but it may not be very comfortable to play for a long time. It is unlikely that anyone would use such a small battery phone as their main gaming machine, and there is limited significance in expanding the usage scenarios beyond its intended purpose.
Summary
If we ignore the support from the Solana ecosystem, according to the current pricing strategy of domestic Android phones, a device with such an old flagship chip, even considering the 12+512 configuration combination, ceramic back cover, and workmanship, with such a small battery and screen performance, it is difficult to have a reasonable price of more than 3,000 yuan. This means that more than half of the price of this phone needs to be reflected through the Solana ecosystem.
Therefore, the real question you need to consider before purchasing this phone is whether you are willing to pay for this deeply integrated interactive experience and Solana ecosystem applications, or whether you are willing to pay to try to break the homogenization and inwardness of the mobile phone market by opening up the on-chain application channel.
However, after a simple experience of three days, I have already inserted the SIM card from Flip3 into Saga, making it my Android mainstay. After all, as a digital product enthusiast, what I want is for the technology iteration of mobile phones not to make products more and more boring. Even if it is wishful thinking, I am willing to pay for that little bit of bold attempt. Saga is not good enough, but it has given me the desire to "play" with a mobile phone that I have not felt in recent years, and next, I look forward to more surprises from the Solana ecosystem.
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